Hymn to Gaia (2022)

The Homeric Hymns are among the oldest surviving texts from Ancient Greece. The gods, images, and ideas contained within them evidence a vast ecosystem of cultural and intellectual exchange across the Mediterranean. These hymns are not direct translations. In the tradition of the original hymnists who continually adapted these stories over centuries, we have made them our own. Drawing inspiration from the original fragmented texts, from an array of contemporary poetic translations, and from other praise music traditions, we created a set of prayers and paeans specific to the insight and anxieties of our own age. This is the first of a trilogy of hymns to the earth, sun, and moon that anchor our sequence of adapted hymns. Here we sing to the earth itself-the "eldest" of all the deities and the "mother of all"-and bless the foundation from which all things are generated, and all stories are set.